I realised that I forgot to tell all those of you who voted here that I went for greens in the end. I'm not sure I like it; the greens I bought ended up being not as varied as they looked like they were going to be from the tubs, and it's all gone a bit boring and turquoise even though my colourist used four different shades. Turquoise always feels to me more of a summer hair colour*... So this is a mea culpa and an "I'll listen to you lot next time". Purple does seem to be the one ...

Maghull Station The Liverpool Echo has the story on its website – see link below:- Extract from Echo article:- 'According to documents to be considered at next week's Liverpool City Region combined authority transport committee, the rail operator together with Merseytravel and Transport for the North will install the devices at all non-gated platforms by the end of the year. It's part of a move aimed at making Merseyside a "UK exemplar" for smart ticketing and new payment technologies.'

This is an excerpt from Red, White and Blues, which is a 2005 documentary by Mike Figgis on the British blues scene of the 1960s. It features clips from interviews with John Mayall, Georgie Fame, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. Steve Winwood, born in 1948, was a young teenager when he played with the American blues greats. In his biography of Winwood, Chris Welch writes: In 1963 when the Spencer Davis Group were still semi-pro they had already played with Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Jimmy Witherspoon, Champion Jack Dupree, and Charlie and Inez Fox.You can see a photo of ...

So, I had got back to Valletta having retrieved my debit card, taking the ferry from Birgu and thought that it might be nice to cross Valletta and catch the ferry over to Sliema as a more interesting route to San Giljan. That meant a ride up the lift at Barrakka, and a stroll past the old opera house and down the slope to the ferry terminal. When I arrived, I discovered that there were no ferries operating until 4 p.m., so I trudged back up the hill, thinking that I could simply catch a bus. It was only when ...

[IMG: Would responsible people attempt a sea crossing with their children?] If a British couple deliberately set out with their small children into rough winter seas by night in a small rubber dinghy, got into difficulties and were rescued by brave life guards, there OUGHT to... The post Would responsible people attempt a sea crossing with their children? appeared first on FeministMama.

From the Shropshire Star today: The National Trust has cancelled its controversial trail hunting licence for the South Shropshire Hunt at the Long Mynd. The trust put the announcement that the remaining dates of the season were cancelled on its website. There were set to be trail hunting events on January 8 and 29, but they will no longer go ahead. It comes after a photographs were taken by Shropshire-based protesters of foxes escaping from hounds in December.I don't know the ins and outs of this case, but the law against fox hunting does appear to be widely flouted. With ...

The sense of things going horribly wrong is likely to get much worse as 2019 gets under way and #BrexitShambles becomes #BrexitFarce. In the probable chaos of the coming months the country needs us to articulate our hope for the future. Putting some flesh on those bones, in no particular order: Improve Benefits. Universal Credit could have been a good idea, but under-funding has hit it hard and people are suffering. Improving the funding is a good place to start. We also need to go further. It is a scandal to have people needing to use food banks or losing ...

I've been talking to Liz Jarvis, who joined the Lib Dems from Labour in the Summer a bit on Twitter. Remarkably, out of 700,000 people, we found each other to have a brief conversation at the People's Vote march in October. She's written for the Independent Voices website about why she joined us. She was pretty involved in the Labour Party as a student and voted Labour throughout her adult life. When the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Tories, any positive feelings she had towards our party evaporated and she continued to vote Labour. But along came Jeremy ...

It appears that it has been a tradition of sorts with me to write a blog reflecting on the year past and looking ahead to the year to come. So here's this year's instalment. Seeing in 2019 with non-alcoholic prosecco and spirits As I noted in previous years, the universe doesn't half have a knack of chucking a curveball my way every once in a while, and this year I was thrown a doozy. In a few short weeks my life is going to change in a way that I couldn't have predicted this time last year and I have ...

Responding to Michael Gove's speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael said: "Mr Gove is still not listening to any experts while it is clear he has forgotten the assurances he and his cronies gave the farming community during the referendum. Farmers have certainly not forgotten. "To plan for their business properly, farmers need to know how much money they'll get, what standards they need to meet and what tariffs they need to pay. All Gove and co. are offering is yet further uncertainty. "This is a national embarrassment, and the Liberal Democrats demand better. The ...

I want to direct today's article mostly to Leavers. For the breadth of this piece, I will not suggest that leaving the EU is a good or bad idea, nor even that leaving with no deal is a good or bad idea. Let's park those arguments for now. What I want to talk about here is just the idea, the erroneous idea I hasten to add, that leaving the EU with no deal at the end of March means we get to keep the £39 billion all to ourselves. This is a myth, one that the political media just will ...

Wed, 12:56: Hungarians Fume as Statue of Former Leader Is Downgraded https://t.co/GbnPbwH6qB This is really bad. The Imre Nagy... https://t.co/hTQkXfSvrd Wed, 14:01: RT @newrycity: @nwbrux https://t.co/aHja1pawFk Wed, 15:38: RT @GCHQ: We've just about finished cleaning up the mess from the Dalek attack last night, but we're happy to confirm GCHQ is still at full... Wed, 16:05: This is an easy one for me. I like Peel's Who books a lot more than most people seem to, and whatever about William... https://t.co/rMsBaYG2cE Wed, 16:19: Top disinformation stories of 2018. All of these seriously published in Kremlin-backed media. https://t.co/ozZFKzxiCk Wed, 17:11: Billie ...

A recent post in the 'Why be a Liberal Democrat?' Christmas competition on LDV had me nodding along in agreement for the first few paragraphs (yes, Labour are hopeless, and despite this our party is in a perilous position), but the nodding stopped at the abrupt veer into advocating for getting rid of 'Orange Bookers' in the party. As a board member of Liberal Reform, which (fairly enough) is regarded as the pressure group for Orange Book fans, I've never really understood why some party members are so bothered by us. Though Liberal Reform members tend to be quite supportive ...

Following on from my post last week on Paddy's Dangerous Idea No. 1, I am delving into his second proposal. Paddy argued: We have long understood that property owning rights are one of the foundation stones of democracy. Yet each of us gives away our most intimate of property free and daily to the most powerful corporations, who make millions and millions from it. I am talking of course, about our personal data. Why do we Lib Dems not assert the citizens right to own their own data and to have control over how it is used? Why about proposing ...

On the plus side, Jeremy Hunt's tenure as Foreign Secretary is a breath of fresh air compared to the record of his predecessor, Boris Johnson. He appears to read and understand his briefs and actually engages with crisis situations when his fellow citizens are in trouble abroad. On the negative side however, he appears to be in denial on what his support for a no-deal Brexit will actually mean. As the Independent reports, Hunt is under fire for claiming Britain's close "connections" with other EU countries will be crucial to the UK's future success, despite his strong support for Brexit. ...

We are not talking apples and pears but parking fines. We are often grumping about penalty charge notices (PCNs) in Ludlow. At times, there is a feeling that we are targeted. Is that the case? I thought I'd take a look on how many fines are handed out across the county. In 2017/18, Shropshire Council's civil enforcement officers handed out nearly 14,000 PCNs. Half of them were, unsurprisingly, slapped on windscreens in Shrewsbury. Bridgnorth came next, followed by Ludlow. Trailing by some way is Oswestry. Nearly 40 tickets a day were issued across the unitary area, five of them in ...